In a recent column, Steven Kalas laments the lack of critical thinking and extols the virtues of debate as a training ground for critical thinking.

A debate team teaches you to be a relentless researcher. On a debate team, you will hone the skills of great oratory. But more than anything else, debate teaches critical thinking.

Rules of inference and logic, fallacies of logic, the burden of proof, parsimony, empiricism, teleology, utilitarianism, epistemology, tests for validity, specious arguments — the language of critical thinkers. There is nothing more important an education can provide a child than to foster a hunger to think critically and the tools to know how.

[via Global Debate Blog]